Remidio Innovative Solutions was set up in 2010, with Rs 5 lakh from the promoters and two friends. It got Rs 15 lakh soon from IKP Knowledge Park in Hyderabad.Hari Pulakkat | ET Bureau | August 28, 2015, 10:05 IST

Anand Sivaraman met Anand Vinekar in a train coming from Coimbatore to Bengaluru, where they both lived.

Sivaraman, a PhD in chemical engineering, was working with biotech firm Reametrix. Vinekar was a pediatric ophthalmologist with Narayana Netralaya.

Vinekar told him about his work, and the problems he faced due to high costs of imaging equipment. Sivaraman, who knew a thing or two about optical imaging, immediately spotted an opportunity.

At 3.5 million a year, India has the largest share of premature births in the world, twice as much as China, the next highest. Retinopathy - damaged retina - is quite common among premature infants. “About 47% of premature babies develop retinopathy,” said Vinekar. Unless detected early, these children become blind.

A complete image of the retina needs a wide-field imaging camera, costing around $100,000 (about Rs 65 lakh). Not many hospitals can afford it, and so the problem goes undiagnosed till it is too late. Sivaraman roped in Pramod Kummaya, a colleague at Reametrix and a product designer.

The UK-based organisation liked the idea but did not quite trust the product. Could Remidio bring out a fully engineered version soon? Wellcome Trust gave the company Rs 1 crore and one year to do so. The fully engineered version was ready by the end of 2011.

It was not a wide-field camera but a low-cost imaging device that can be hooked on to a mobile phone camera, called ‘Fundus On Phone’. Within a month, Remidio got Rs 4 crore and three more years from Wellcome Trust, and last year it launched the device.

It costs Rs 1.8 lakh and can take prints of the central part of the retina. “It is useful to detect diabetic retinopathy early,” said Sivaraman. But the device cannot detect retinopathy in premature infants, as it cannot image the whole retina.

Remidio is developing more sophisticated devices. A fluorescent angiography device, costing Rs 8 lakh, detects blocks in the arteries of the eye. The company got its first angel funding - Rs 80 lakh - from CipherPlexus, and is readying to go for its first institutional round of financing. Sale of about 150 ‘Fundus On Phone’ devices has brought in around Rs 2 crore.

The angiography imager has just been launched. The wide-field camera is the next target. Remidio’s optical engineering is sophisticated, but it has no graduate engineers. “I decided from the beginning that I will hire only diploma holders,” said Sivaraman. The last few years have seen the birth of several healthcare device startups like Remidio.

Their aim is to capture the rural healthcare device market, but few have had significant commercial success. “Low cost alone does not work in India,” said Dipanwita Chattopadhyay, CEO of IKP Knowledge Park. “The technology has to be sound.” At the moment, Remidio has one domestic competitor: Forus Healthcare in Bengaluru. A decade ago, the domestic healthcare device industry was non-existent.